These Days of Dust
by UndercoverMoffat
Summary: "I met you on a street corner in the middle of the night," he reiterates. "There's a lot of mystery in that, Twilight Zone." (Or, the one where Tony thinks he knows everything there is to know about Steve Rogers.). Non-superhero AU.


This is over a year old and I'm tired of fics in my "in prog" folder so yay for short fics that might have once been long here we are. Un-Beta'd and not really checked over for errors because I'm tired and I wanna watch Black Butler. I hope you enjoy as is ilysm xoxo (Or, the one where I'm a really lazy writer.)

Non superhero AU.

* * *

Tony Stark does not like the cold.

He doesn't like the way it seeps straight through your skin and settles into your bones, like it owns you or something. The cold is so much worse in New York, too, that ever-present chill in the air that doesn't disappear even in the summer. He hates it more than he hates being Tony Stark, and that certainly says something.

He hates walking, too, when he could always just call Happy to come pick him up, but he needs time to think, and he certainly cares about Happy, but sometimes he asks too many questions. And believe it or not, but even billionaires get stressed. Of course, in Tony's case, stress usually leads to his reaching for a bottle, which only adds on to the stress – it's a never-ending, vicious cycle, and really, all Tony wants is out.

Tony's turning this over in his head when he sees him.

He's just – sitting there, on the curb, with a sketchpad in his hand and a pencil to his chin, and he doesn't look at all like the artistic type, not with those broad shoulders and carefully styled blonde hair. Not to mention the plaid and leather jacket that looks like something straight out of a '40's movie.

Tony tells himself that he should keep walking, but in his defense, the stranger has a smile that could knock the breath out of anyone, even Tony frigging Stark. He learns this quickly when the guy glances up and offers one.

There's a whole lane of traffic separating them, Tony on one curb, the stranger on the other and Tony really really should keep walking.

The streetlight turns red.

Tony doesn't know what his feet are doing, or even why, and he tries with all his power to stop them, but they won't and the next thing he knows he's standing on the same curb with the stranger, who's still smiling like he has a reason to.

"What are you doing?"

It's Tony that asks, which frightens him to a certain degree, because he's genuinely curious. He's Tony Stark, he doesn't get curious, he just knows.

"Sketching," the other man smiles like it's the simplest answer in the world.

"On a traffic curb at midnight in the middle of November?" Tony clarifies and he takes a step closer, shivering in his coat.

"Why not?" the guy shifts, and it's then that Tony fully grasps the fact that he's not just sitting, but he looks like a good little kindergartener with his legs crossed and his back straight, sketchpad now balanced on his knee.

"Touche," Tony shrugs, and everything in his body is telling him to leave, to forget it, but he ignores it. "If you want to freeze your ass off out here."

"It's not that cold," the stranger replies with a thoughtful tone. "No snow."

"Not yet."

He smiles again, that million-dollar smile (and Tony would know what those look like). "What's your name?"

Tony scoffs. "Come on, everyone knows that great Tony Stark."

He frowns a little. "Like Stark Industries."

"Guilty as charged."

His expression clears, and Tony decides not to push it – he doesn't really want to know anyway. "It's nice to meet you, the great Tony Stark. I'm the not-so-great Steve Rogers."

Tony allows himself a small chuckle, and cuts it off just as quickly with a sharp intake of breath because Tony Stark doesn't chuckle, not unless it's at the expense of somebody else. He clears his throat to hide it, though why he should, he can't tell you, and holds out his hand.

The not-so-great Steve Rogers takes it, with a hand larger and warmer than Tony's own, and shakes it, once, twice, with a firm grasp that Tony usually doesn't feel unless it's from big business leaders and their prissy kids.

Tony's body does that thing again, where it moves without his permission, and the next thing he knows he's sitting next to Steve Rogers on a traffic curb, at midnight, in the middle of November. "You don't seem all that impressed," he gives Steve a sideways glance.

Steve looks down at his sketchpad and rubs a thumb across the rough paper. "I don't keep up with business," he admits, and he sounds almost shy. "Most business leaders seem corrupt to me. No offense."

"None taken, you're insulting my father, not me. I'm friends with anybody that insults him," Tony looks away because, did he really just say friends? Tony Stark doesn't have friends.

"Why?"

The question catches Tony off-guard. Nobody asks why. They just go along with it, or chalk it up to their own opinion, or they simply don't give a rat's ass, but Steve asks why.

"Why what?" Tony asks to buy himself some time to think about this.

"Why do you hate your father?"

Tony never said that, and Steve's jumping to conclusions – the thing is, Steve is jumping to the right ones, which is even more unsettling than the why he threw out earlier.

"Why do you care." It's harsh and uncalled for, and Tony should be sorry because Steve flinches and leans away a little, but he's not. Besides, Steve recovers too quickly for his own good, and leans right back into Tony's personal space.

"Because you look like you need somebody to talk to."

"So you think that's going to be you?"

"Why not?"

Tony forces himself to meet eyes with Steve, and he doesn't think he's ever seen anything so blue in his whole entire life, and he hates that he notices. "I think a better question is why am I talking to you? I mean, you can't be all that normal of a person – you're out here in the middle of the night sketching -" he leans over and peers at Steve's heavily detailed drawing. "A lamppost for fuck's sake."

"I already did the storefronts," Steve grins, and if that's a dimple, Tony's going to fling himself off a cliff. "And there's not many interesting people around here."

Tony sniffs. "Go somewhere interesting."

"I don't know any interesting places," Steve counters, nudging Tony's shoulder with his own and Tony's appalled at himself because he doesn't move away. "I could sketch you if you like."

"Why would I want that?" That's Tony, always going on the defense.

"Because you're interesting," Steve blushes and scowls back down at this sketchpad, and if it wasn't so damn endearing . . . "Nobody's ever stopped to ask what I'm doing."

"Are you flirting with me, Steve Rogers?"

"Would you like me too?"

That catches Tony off-guard too, and he has to give props to his guy – not many people can surprise Tony fucking Stark like that in a matter of a few minutes, let alone more than once. So maybe he's interested.

Besides, he still doesn't why Steve Rogers felt it necessary to sit on a street corner at midnight in the middle of November.

"We'll start with that and work our way up."

~X~

Steve is there the next night too, and Tony rarely visits the same places twice, but he actually had hopes of seeing Steve. He doesn't like that, being interested. Because in all honesty he hasn't even thought about sex with Steve yet, and that scares him more than anything else.

"Have a drink with me."

Tony really has to stop letting his mouth and body do these things without his permission, it's starting to become a problem. Even more so when Steve tilts his head back and peers up at Tony like he's some foreign object from Gallifrey (Tony Stark is a secret Whovian, oh dear God please don't tell Pepper) or something.

"Okay."

Tony blinks. "Really?" He swallows at the "y" and his voice goes up a little and damn it he sounds like a hormonal teenager.

"Why not?"

There's that Famous-Steve-Rogers-Why-Not again, and Tony's starting to think he'll be hearing a whole lot of it in the future – the future. Like there's going to be one. Like he expects one. Tony's really got to get his head on straight, he's scaring himself. Worse, he laid awake all night before (hasn't slept in two days, not a record, he can go for at least four) but instead of working like he usually does, he laid there and thought about Steve. Steve, some guy he just met on a street corner.

He pulls himself from his reverie because he's 90% sure Steve's gonna see "OMG I'M YOUR NUMBER ONE FAN!" written all over his expression if he doesn't. "Yeah, great," Tony smiles.

Steve stands, sketchbook held in his hand.

"You carry that thing everywhere?"

Steve laughs a little and Tony thinks it's a nice sound. "Sketching helps me think," he admits almost sheepishly – Tony finds it downright adorable. "So, yes, pretty much."

"I do math equations," Tony blurts. "That helps me think."

Steve's grin doesn't fade, but he doesn't say anything. Tony thinks he doesn't have to.

They find some quiet backlit bar that looks like it tries to be high-class, with fancy, dim-lit lights, and baristas in aprons and bowties, but Tony can tell right away that it's a struggling place. He almost feels bad. Almost.

"I don't drink," Steve says suddenly when Tony ushers them into their chairs at a table.

"That's a shame," Tony sighs. "Because I do."

Steve chuckles again. "There's nothing wrong with that, I just don't." He shrugs, but there's something in the way his shoulders are set that suggests he doesn't want to talk about it. Usually Tony would push for answers, because Tony doesn't like open-ended questions. Everything has to have an answer of some sort, every puzzle has to be solved. Not this time.

Steve Rogers is different.

"Tell me about yourself, Rogers," Tony finds himself saying after he's gotten a shot of whiskey, finger tracing the lip of the glass. Another new one for his scrapbook of "Things I Never Did Before Steve Rogers" - show actual interest in his past, in his story. (Outside of solving a puzzle, that is, because it's all a matter of being handed the pieces in the first place. Tony doesn't like to be handed things.) He's more fucked up than he gives himself credit for.

The right corner of Steve's mouth quirks up and he shifts his gaze to the tabletop, fiddling with the pen laying aimlessly next to his sketchbook. "There's not much to tell," he says, and Tony snorts a little too loudly.

Steve looks at him and the quirk in his mouth has made a rapid move to his eyebrow. Tony matches his gaze and spreads his hands. "I met you on a street corner in the middle of the night," he reiterates. "There's a lot of mystery in that, Twilight Zone."

Steve cracks a smile at that and Tony can't help but think it's the very definition of beautiful. "I'm an art student with a studio apartment. And you're -" he gestures at Tony, at his expensive suit and his equally pricey sunglasses and his well-styled hair. He doesn't say anything but he looks at Tony with that smile apparent in his eyes and Tony's heart does a skittering thing that makes him uncomfortable.

He downs the rest of his shot and stands, smoothing out his suit jacket and extending a hand towards Steve. "Show me."

~X~

Steve isn't just an art student - he's talented and Tony actually finds himself stopping and appreciating the half-finished canvases littered across Steve's cramped apartment space. Steve follows him, watches his face whenever Tony focuses on whatever painting or drawing or sculpture catches his eyes. They're good and Tony can tell there's story behind every one and he wants to know them (God damn) but he doesn't ask.

Steve offers him a drink while Tony sits on the kitchen counter and flips through a sketchbook full of incomplete drawings and doodles. "I thought you didn't drink," Tony teases while he flips a page languidly.

"I don't," Steve reaffirms, pulling a dusty bottle of whiskey out of the cabinet above his head. "I have guests."

"Guests?" Tony repeats, and fuck no, he's not jealous, that would be totally irrational.

"Occasionally." The bastard grins.

I want to kiss him, he realises with a sudden fervor while Steve passes a small glass into his hand. He should, he thinks, he should pull the dumb guy closer and just kiss him really hard and give him a taste of what Tony Stark's made of, but he resists, if only barely. Steve leans against the counter and watches his face and he immediately feels self-conscious which is just fucking ridiculous.

But then Steve's kissing him and he can't remember why he ever was in the first place.

~X~

Tony doesn't bow out in the middle of the night.

He should, because he has three missed calls from Pepper by the time the sun comes up, another from Happy, and a meeting in two hours (he won't go), but he doesn't. He stays in Steve Rogers' bed under an ugly orange comforter with a New York Film Academy sweatshirt on (Steve doesn't have a heater and Tony thinks he should get one installed. There's that thinking of the future thing again.) He wakes up to the smell of eggs burning and when he wanders into Steve's kitchen there's a plate of pancakes and an empty carton of milk on the counter.

"You're awake," Steve says with genuine warmth and at the point, Tony knows he's in for it.

~X~

Tony Stark doesn't fall in love, and certainly not with big, goofy artists living in two-room studio apartments littered with half-finished portraits of himself and the landscape.

He thinks he knows everything there is to know about Steve. Grew up in wayside Brooklyn with a nose in a sketchbook and more bullies than Tony has dollars in his bank account; mom who died early on and a father more absent than Tony's own, but in different ways. Goes to a damn art school like he needs it, sells portraits on street corners and to Tony because Tony makes him. He should tell everyone he comes across about Steve, tell them about how talented he is and - "You need to have this hanging on your wall, if anything it'll give your one-night stands something nice to look at it!" - but he doesn't. Because Steve is his, his paintings are his and he wouldn't share Steve with the world.

They go out sometimes, when Tony's not answering stupidest phone calls in his father's name or shifty-eyed at the paparazzi he knows is lurking in the branches over there and behind that car on the other side of the parking lot. Steve's name only shows up once in some tabloid National Enquirer-esque thing that nobody takes seriously and Tony is oh so grateful for that. He thinks maybe Pepper is pulling some strings somewhere because he's only bribed about two big time magazine editors to keep his name out unless they want to talk about how stylishly dressed he is.

They go out sometimes but not often. Steve's anxiety ridden and Tony's a paranoid fuck and they are perfectly okay with sitting in Steve's studio apartment and watching But I'm a Cheerleader and throwing popcorn and Tony thinks in those moments that one day he could really love Steve. Tony's fucked up and has more daddy issues on one hand than he ever could on two and he hates being handed things and hates getting attached to people more than anything but sometimes Steve looks at him like maybe he's terrified too and somehow it ends up being alright.

He could say I love you, one day, he thinks. After all, he thinks knows everything there is to know about Steve.

He thinks.

~X~

"Tony, I'm enlisted."

Enlisted could mean many things, that's something Tony knows for sure. "Enlisted in what?" He asks, swallowing hard, and maybe a part of him already knows that answer but the rest of him is ignoring it. He wants to close the distance between them on the bed so very bad, so bad that his hand burns to touch Steve, but he keeps to himself, because it's the smart thing to do. It doesn't make sense, really, Tony would know something like that, he's run thirteen different background checks (he never looked at them, he should have, he should have known, but every time he went to the guilt overrode him.)

Steve's eyes flutter shut like he can't bear to look at anything. "The Army."

Tony's throat closes. "So?"

Steve exhales, long and steady, not quite a sigh, but somewhere in between. "I'm being deployed."

Tony's world drains of color in an instant, everything suddenly awash in grays and off-white hues and if he squints there's an edge of red at his vision that he could call anger. "No you're not," he says, because he's Tony fucking Stark and there's something he can do about it.

"Tony -"

"No," he repeats firmly, and Steve opens his eyes and turns to him, but this time it's Tony who looks away. "I'm Tony Stark, and I'm a billionaire, and I know people and I can get you out of this. You're not going anywhere."

Steve does that exhale thing again, like he fully expected Tony to say these things and he had a response ready that he didn't want to give. "I have a duty to my country -"

"Fuck that," Tony chokes out, and he hates how his voice sounds like he's dying. "You don't have to do this."

"I want to."

Tony sits up but he keeps his back to Steve, feet hitting the floor and fists clenching the bed sheets. "How long."

He hears Steve move, but there's no touch to accompany it. "Two year tour in Iraq. Tony, it'll be – it'll be over before you know it, and -"

"When."

Steve doesn't reply.

Tony grits his teeth and almost turns around but he keeps his gaze laser focused on the blank white wall in front of him. "When."

"Tomorrow."

Tony feels like he's drowning. He should've known, he should've known, this was too good to be true, Steve Rogers is too good to be true, any of it, and damn it, he shouldn't have gotten attached, he knew better, and he went ahead and he did anyway, and fuck. What's he going to do? He can't – not without Steve – no –

"Tony -"

"Don't Steve, please don't."

But Steve is Steve and he doesn't listen to Tony, and so he's moving and sitting next to Tony and putting two hands on Tony's face and making their eyes meet. And Tony hates that he almost sobs out loud at the tears in Steve's eyes. "Wait for me."

It takes him a long moment to register those words. "Fuck you," he says when he finally does.

Steve doesn't even blink. "Wait for me here, alright?"

"No," Tony laughs bitterly, because that's just what Tony Stark does. "I'm not going to wait like some sort of fucknig Army wife for someone who might ne -" he can't finish his sentence, he can't even think it. He should've known, he should've known.

"Who might what?" Steve's voice is barely above a whisper.

"Who might never come back."

"I'll come back, Tony."

"I don't believe you."

Tony breaks then, for the first time in years, just breaks right there in Steve Rogers arms, melts into a puddle and sobs like a child who slammed their finger in a car door, huddled in a ball against Steve's chest. He sobs and begs and pleads Steve please, please don't leave me, I need you, and he knows he's pathetic, but he doesn't care. And Steve just holds him and shushes him and says, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I have to, I love you.

I love you.

~X~

"Where are we -"

"Don't ask."

Pepper closes her mouth and Tony sees her exchange a look with Happy in the rear view mirror but he doesn't comment. He doesn't even want to.

As soon as the car rolls to a complete stop, he's out the door, sunglasses perched on his nose and tie askew and he looks a mess, but he doesn't care not at all.

He hates being so far away. He'd give anything to be closer.

"Tony -"

"Not right now."

Pepper shuts up, which all he ever wanted out of her. He feels like throwing up as he watches the way wives and girlfriends cry in their soldiers arm's, and he wants to scream and yell at all of them that at least you can say good-bye. That you can say good-bye and if you lose that one person you love more than anything, there will be someone, many more someone's, who will understand, and listen, and care, and love and support you. Tony doesn't have that, because nobody even knows. Nobody will.

He can see Steve in that throng of soldiers, staring directly at him like he always knew exactly where he'd be.

Tony can't breathe as Steve lifts to fingers to his lips and then extends them outwards towards him.

Tony doesn't motion back, and when Steve gets on that bus, he wishes more than anything he had.

~X~

~X~

~X~

"Jarvis?"

Tony's own voice bounces off the empty walls of the mansion, reverberating through his skull, mocking him. "Jarvis?" he repeats, turning full circle as he loosens the tie around his neck – and freezes, hand dropping to his side, whole world tilting on it's axis.

It can't be.

He doesn't look like him, like the one Tony remembers, there's too many lines in his face and dust in his hair and his fatigues are filthy and covered in sand, and the duffel bag over his shoulder has blood stains and is falling apart at the seams. But his blue eyes are still alive, oh so very alive, and they shoot warmth through Tony's veins.

"Steve," he says because he hasn't in so lung.

Steve's duffel bag slides to the floor, and in one quick motion, they're both running, towards each other, like a scene out of a romantic comedy, and their colliding in a flurry of hands and mouth and Oh my God, Steve, Tony, Steve.

Tony's never laughed and cried before, but it's not as bad as he thought it would be.


End file.
